What was suspected for months, and hinted at with a statement in April, was made official just 48 hours before the start of the 2016 Tour de France — Australian-based Drapac Capital Partners is now a co-title sponsor of the U.S.-based Cannondale Pro Cycling Team managed by Slipstream Sports.

Effective June 30, the team will be known as the Cannondale-Drapac Pro Cycling Team, with Drapac’s signature red hue adorning the team’s signature green jerseys at the Tour. The sponsorship will last through the 2020 season.

To say that the Pro Continental team that owner Michael Drapac founded in 2004 is folding into the Cannondale-Drapac squad would be simplifying a more complicated arrangement, however.

While there will be no Pro Continental squad in 2017, some riders and staff will join the Cannondale WorldTour squad — among them Australian Brendan Canty, seventh at the Tour of Oman earlier this year, whom team manager Jonathan Vaughters described as “WorldTour capable.”

Other riders and staff will be moved into the Australian Continental team Drapac-Pat’s Veg, which in 2017 becomes a joint venture between Drapac and Slipstream Sports that will require its riders to either attend university courses or pursue professional-level certifications or apprenticeships. The team will be structured to provide favorable racing schedules that allow racers to attend classes or pursue professions.

“A rider like Brendan, who has a super high potential, he’ll be on the WorldTour team next year,” Vaughters said. “There will also be a number of riders [from the Drapac Pro Continental team] who won’t be WorldTour capable.”

Brendan Canty on the 2016 Tour of Oman podium after winning the best young rider classification.

Vaughters said that no riders from the existing Pro Continental team would be coming across to the WorldTour team based upon existing contracts, a situation he faced when Slipstream Sports assumed Cannondale sponsorship, and contracts, from the former Italian WorldTour team managed by Brixia Sport.

He added that the Australian Continental team riders would likely race on the Asian circuit — tours of Japan, Qinghai Lake, and Langkawi — as well as the Australian NRS calendar. “But then they’re going to have to travel to Europe,” Vaughters said. “They may do a big long road trip. I’m not saying six months in Europe, it could be six weeks in Europe, maybe during summer vacation, or taking a semester off. It could be more of a balancing act. Team management will have to be careful in scheduling races off-continent at appropriate times.”

While Drapac-Pat’s Veg is racing in Europe, the team will have access to the WorldTour team’s service course and facilities, Vaughters said. The Continental team will also race on Cannondale bikes, with the majority of sponsors trickling down from the WorldTour team to the Continental team.

Because Cannondale-Drapac and Drapac-Pat’s Veg will share the same management group, Vaughters said fans won’t see the two teams at any of the same races, such as the Herald Sun Tour, or tours of California or Utah. (UCI rule 2.2.001 states that “Riders belonging to teams with the same paying agent or main partner may not compete in the same race except in the case of an individual event.”)

And while Drapac and Cannondale are now major shareholders of Slipstream Sports, Vaughters said that Doug Ellis, the program’s owner since 2008, is still the team’s primary shareholder.

Together with Crossing the Line Sport, an organization designed to assist athlete transitions out of professional competition, the WorldTour team will offer workshops, individual counseling services, mentoring, and robust educational support to its riders. It is the first program of its kind at WorldTour level. Crossing the Line Founder Geroid Towney and Gayelene Clews, a psychologist who works with the firm, are former Olympic athletes. Drapac will oversee the wellness program internally as its executive vice president.

Drapac’s business efforts have garnered various sustainability awards — his company was the first property group to be a member of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment. “I’ve always been interested in sustainability, particularly cultural sustainability,” Drapac said in a team statement.

“Sustainability is being aware, responsible, and accountable for the full costs of what we do, and trying to minimize the impact of those costs. So a sustainable initiative, in business, cycling, anything, really, is about making an intention to be aware, accountable, and responsible.

“And making an intention to minimize the impact of what we do. We want to win bike races, but not at the expense of broader values. Sustainability in this sense is about ‘what are the broader values in the cycling team?’ We need to look at that. We want to win the Tour de France. We want to win Paris-Roubaix. But we also have other metrics by which we measure our success.”

Asked how the rule to take courses or pursue certifications would be enforced, Vaughters told CyclingTips it wouldn’t be a matter of enforcement. “We’re not going to hire guys where you say, ‘Here’s the thing, you have to go to university. It’s basically about hiring kids who want to do that anyway. The requirement is not to be in university, it could be a vocational school to be plumber, or a PhD student, it’s just that they have decided to give it a shot to be a pro, that they are not willing to give up education.

“Look at Sepp Kuss, he said in an interview on CyclingTips that he wants to do that, that he wants to finish school and have something to fall back on. We’re not having to force them, we’re just supporting them in that.”

Vaughters added that while Drapac’s philosophy of preparing riders for life after cycling was attractive, as is the stability of a five-year sponsor, what is most exciting is to work with someone he genuinely “likes as a person.”

“I’ve been lucky to do that with Doug Ellis for years, and now I have that with Michael Drapac,” Vaughters said. “Last February or March, when I first reached out to him about maybe partnering up, he told me to come down to visit his company, which is based out of Atlanta. I think he thought I was coming to say ‘I just graduated with an MBA and I want in to your real-estate business.’ And while what they do is really fascinating — they look at real-estate markets, evaluate them, decide when they will buy, when they will sell, it’s a capital-investments fund, really — that’s not why I wanted to visit with him.

“Michael thought I wanted to work with him, and he was open to that, and he almost tried to convince me to do that, when I actually wanted to convince him to invest into a WorldTour team. But here was someone who had enough faith in me that he would have invested in me outside of cycling. I’m proud to be able to represent a guy who had my back.”

Asked if the new sponsorship puts Slipstream Sports on the most stable ground it’s been on since the team jumped into the sport’s highest level in 2008, Vaughters said yes, but added that the team still does not have the budget of other WorldTour teams like Astana, Sky, or Katusha.

“It certainly puts us in a better position for long-term stability, without a doubt,” Vaughters said. “And it’s very nice to have that. However, we’re always looking for sponsorship. The reason for that is simply that we want to be — it’s my dream, it’s Doug Ellis’ dream, it’s Michael Drapac’s dream — to someday sign a Sky, $40 million a year sponsor, so that we could go out and really be competitive on the transfer market, and try to win the Tour de France.

“In one aspect, yes we are in a stable position. In another, we’re always searching for the deal that puts us back at the top of the WorldTour rankings. As much as I love this team, and I love playing the underdog, it sometimes wears on you when you are dealing with 30 to 40% of the budget of your major competitors. All these guys deserve better support from the team. It would be nice to go out and knock heads with other teams on an even playing field, rather than always playing the David vs. Goliath role.”

As for the team’s new Christmas-color motif, Vaughters could only laugh. “Cannondale is green. Drapac is red,” he said. “Santa Claus is coming to town.”

I’d love to see Michael Turtur’s face when he has to suck up to Michael Drapac now, after refusing them entry to the TDU for years.

Dave

In the current reality, a quick look would show you that Drapac has been granted invitational wildcards for every edition of the TDU since they became eligible to accept them at the start of the 2014 season.

First OBE and now CAD? Would be awesome to see some CAADs in the peleton. Loving this new batch of team TLAs.

Dave

The UCI website’s list of WorldTour teams already has it changed to CDT. It will be interesting to see whether this run has been left too late for the graphics producers preparing TdF content for different networks.

OGE is still OGE, according to the UCI website.

Carton

My $.02: they should have green for some races (Giro?), red for other races (Vuelta?), and save the Christmas kit for the Tour.

Dave

CT, do you have any info on:

– whether the current Cannondale development team Cylance-Incycle p/b Cannondale will still be a development team for the new setup?
– whether one of Cannondale-Drapac or Drapac will have to drop out of the Tour of Utah due to shared ownership?

H.E. Pennypacker

Hadn’t thought about the Tour of Utah issue. But is there still going to be a Drapac Pro-Continental team in August when the Tour of Utah rolls around? If so, I would think Cannondale would take priority since Dombrowski won the overall last year and I assume his plan is to defend.

My understanding is that Drapac Capital is a sponsor of both teams in 2016. In 2017, they become a holding company of Cannondale-Drapac and as a result ALL riders, both in WT and Pat’s Veg Devo squad are paid from the same purse so to speak. As per the rules, this rules out Pat’s Veg being able to compete in the same races as Cannondale-Drapac WT Team – 2017 Herald Sun Tour, 2017 Utah etc. In short, nothing really changes for 2016.

Neal Rogers

I asked Vaughters about this, and he said that Cannondale-Drapac will be managed by (paying agent) Slipstream Sports, while Drapac-Pat’s Veg Conti team will be a joint effort between Slipstream and Drapac. Therefore, theoretically, they could compete at same events, as they are managed by different paying agents, but that they would not. As these changes take effect for 2107, I don’t believe this should impact any 2016 races such as Tour of Utah.

it seems there is no more Drapac in the pro-conti sense. so either C-D will participate, or if not, Drapac-Pat’s Veg may participate if they get invited – although they’re only Continental status. it sounds like they can’t both be there.

Dave

If Jonathan Cantwell is to be believed, at least the existing contracts won’t be an obstacle to shutting down DPC immediately.

It sounds as if Brendan Canty will be the only Drapac rider to “merge” into the Cannondale squad, but even he would be left out in the cold if DPC is shut down immediately as the Cannondale roster is (interestingly for a team well known for whinging about their low budget) full and there’s no space for an immediate transfer.

This could well make for a quieter than usual Vaughters throughout the Tour de France. He won’t want to attract too much attention from the UCI if he knows he is sailing close to the wind.

jules

it does look like they’ve dropped their pro conti team like a hot potato. they’ve long been accused of under-performing and a decent chuck of the roster seems not to fit into either the World Tour or Continental ‘development’ categories.

Dave

The UCI website’s list of teams has been updated to show CDT, but DPC still shows.

Can a Melbourne-based reader please go and knock on the door of the Drapac Professional Cycling premises and see if there’s anybody there?

Robert Merkel

Of course a lot of us are particularly excited that Brendan will get his chance at WT level, but there’s more to contemplate here methinks.

For one, the Pro Conti teams, particularly the ones that can’t count on a GT invite, are kinda caught between a rock and a hard place. It’s hard to see how they can generate enough exposure to pay their riders enough to justify being a professional cyclist.

On the sporting side, does this mean Cannondale-Drapac will have enough money to hire another marquee rider or two?

Robert Merkel

Oh, and another thought – surely the new team will want a proper aero road bike from Cannondale at some point.

Nick Squillari

With Rinard at Cannondale, it would seem like a matter of ‘when’ not ‘if’ an aero bike comes along.

Mark

Isn’t your question really (when you look at both your posts), “How long is Cannondale a Marquee sponsor”?

Mickey McMook

Cannondale and Holowesko and other sponsors like Castelli are all fed up with Vaughters and paying big bucks for the worst managed team in the ProTour. Cannondale and Holowesko will not continue in 2017, while Cannondale is already looking for an out.

Mark

Essentially what I was getting at, but without knowing for sure and I couldn’t be arsed googling the currently state of play after all the rumours leading up to this.

Phillip

Great way to kill 10 years of development just to get your name at the Tour de France.
Don’t see many Drapac riders other than Canty going to Cannondale. Majority of the squad is either riders who failed at World Tour or struggle to beat Conti Teams. Granted there are some exceptions but they will probably get shafted by the merger.

Not sure why anybody would want to merge with Vaughters, his team seems more interested with Instagram than with winning races.

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